Every week, we feature customized desktops and home screens submitted by readers that show off great customization tools and UI tweaks. 2012 was a great year to customize your desktop or home screen, and we saw more great-looking and highly-functional setups than ever before. Here's a look back at the most popular customizations of the past year.

A glowing night city and a rare astronomical event lay the groundwork for Flickr user Tasha Ward's desktop, on top of which she's built an informative, intelligent, and useful HUD thanks to a little Rainmeter wizardry. More »

If you're going to have widgets and status boxes and rss feeds on your desktop, most people would agree they should at least be unobtrusive and not a distraction from the wallpaper or the overall theme. More »

When we say this is "the original desktop," it's not because it's the first one, or because it's totally unique, but because Flickr user Bassam Rajput has an inspiring wallpaper that encourages us to be original. More »

Flickr user zulfaqar wanted a desktop that was elegant, informative, but also relaxing and serene for those long days in front of the computer doing work for the office or writing papers for school. More »

Reader Ammar Githam took a slightly different approach to home screen creation, placing all of his icons on the wallpaper itself for more freedom to create this handwriting-on-paper look. More »

There you have it - the most popular home screens and featured desktops of 2012. If you want to see your customized desktop or your phone's home screen in a post or list like this one, here's what to do: